Report: Illinois Lagging On Health Care For Poor

A new report says Illinois ranks 36th among the states for delivering health care services to its low-income residents.

The Commonwealth Fund released a scorecard Wednesday detailing how states are performing on health care coverage, prevention and treatment of low-income people.

The report looks at 30 health indicators and finds wide geographic variations with big gaps between the highest-performing and lowest-performing states.

The report's authors say Illinois could do much better. For example, nearly 200,000 low-income Illinois adults would get recommended care such as mammograms and flu shots, if Illinois did as well as the top-performing states.

The report defines "low income'' as under 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That's about $23,000 annual income for an individual or about $47,000 for a family of four.